Shallow | Center

The Law's the Law

OF COURSE. The baby gets sick, my workload is heinous, and so I take a break from baseball watching and blogging for a week. Naturally, then, the Phillies win six of seven, including last night's late-inning hair-raiser. The Law of Inverse Viewing holds true. Fellow blogger Tom Goyne told me a couple of days ago to continue staying away, as it would ensure further winning, and after last night, when my only exposure was about an inning on the radio on my way to and from our local pizza joint to pick up dinner, I'm inclined to believe him.

So. Anything else happening in the world I can write about?

Is It Too Early to Say Wait Till Next Year?

JUST WHEN you (okay, I) thought there weren't any more wheels left to fall off the Phillies' bus,

• The team's No. 1 starter gets sent to the bullpen ... as a setup guy,
• The league's reigning MVP does something not good to his leg running out a grounder, and
• They lose to one of baseball's worst teams.

Hell, who am I kidding? The Phillies are one of baseball's worst teams. The speed with which the Phils have plunged from lofty preseason expectations down into the deep abyss of their current reality is spectacular and breathtaking. Commenting here yesterday, Ben Keeler of the Keeler Political Report wondered whether we all simply overrated the team, and he might be on to something. Last year's August and September surge may have made us forget that after the 2006 trading-deadline purge, no less an observer than Pat Gillick said the club wouldn't be ready to contend until 2008. Maybe we should have listened to him.

Charlie Coarse

FOR A team that's supposed to be headed by a player's manager, the Phillies sure look like they're trying to get him fired.

What was supposed to be Charlie Manuel's strength -- eliciting the very best from his team -- is nowhere in sight, with his by-all-accounts talented roster sleepwalking through nine losses against just three wins. Last night's whipping by the Mets was so frustrating that Manuel allowed himself to be baited into fury by a showboating question from windbag-about-town Howard Eskin. Uncle Cholly has never been a technically adept manager, and now that his charges have coughed up another huge, disgusting furball of an April, it's indeed time to ask exactly what value he brings to the enterprise. Not because a guy like Eskin says so -- Manuel surely knows better than anyone whether and when his team will respond to a locker-room ass-kicking -- but because he's failing at the only part of his job for which he has ever shown any knack.

Wiki, Wild Stuff

A SUPPORTING player takes center stage in today's random walk through Wikipedia, with guitarist and producer David Rawlings in the spotlight. Rawlings is bluegrass singer-songwriter Gillian Welch's music partner, and he's produced and played on records by her and others. According to the Wikipedia article, the guitar he typically plays is an Epiphone Olympic archtop from 1935, which is considerably older than the air guitar that works so well for me.

Maybe They Just Need to Announce Their Presence With Authority

ON SUNDAY an absurd amount of rain drenched the East Coast, and yesterday it was followed first by snow, and then slush, and then more rain. Springtime at this point is a mirage, and you'd be forgiven for considering yourself an agnostic with regard to its existence. While the rest of us grumble and shiver and continue to keep a snow shovel next to the front door despite our wives' protests, I wonder whether the Phillies have secretly welcomed the lousy weather. They had no positive momentum to break, so it's not as if a couple of unexpected days off threw off their rhythm. If anything, perhaps the hiatus will serve as the sprinkler-induced rainout in Bull Durham, allowing a too-tight team to relax, settle down, have some fun, and come back to play with joy and verve and maybe win a game or two here and there.

Top-Heavy

HOPE PAT Gillick enjoyed his honeymoon.

The Phillies' general manager came here last year with a glittering resume, and if his hiring elicited disappointment from those who were angling for someone with more of a sabermetric bent, at least it appeared that a real GM would be occupying the position, unlike the pretender of seasons past. Last year's unexpected late-season surge mitigated and obscured the Phils' early-season horror show, buying him some more time, but with yet another disastrous April unfolding, the public perception of Gillick as savvy baseball vet has given way to that of out-of-touch seat-warmer buying time until retirement.

In Wednesday's Daily News, Sam Donnellon wrote that Gillick's "grace period ... should stop now," and Tom Goodman at Swing and a Miss posted a devastating indictment of the GM, his manager, and his bosses. It's getting more difficult to disagree. As Jayson Stark pointed out the other day, just one team in the last 30 years has made the playoffs after a 1-6 start. The players may be pressing, and they're certainly underperforming, but the person who assembled the roster shouldn't be left off the hook just because he wears Hawaiian shirts instead of a jersey and cap.

Just Like They Drew It Up

THERE, NOW, was that so difficult? The Phillies' win last night over the Mets was as close to the playbook version as Charlie Manuel is ever going to get. He got seven good innings out of Adam Eaton, allowing him to use just two relievers, and those guys, Antonio Alfonseca and Tom Gordon, looked strong in throwing a scoreless eighth and ninth, respectively. The offense was efficient, scratching out five runs on just five hits, with Aaron Rowand and Jimmy Rollins providing much of the production. The Phils still have quite a climb to scramble out of the nasty hole they've dug themselves, but for one night, at least, they looked like a team that had its stuff together.

Wiki, Wild Stuff

AS A daily watcher of (by which I mean, "person in the same room while his daughter watches") Playhouse Disney, I'm familiar with the short pieces that air between programs such as Higglytown Heroes and Little Einsteins. And so when today's random Wikipedia article turned up 26-year-old Canadian actress/voiceover person/TV-radio personality Stephanie Beard (left, in photo) and described her as host of "a series of short interstitial segments aired between regular weekday programming" on a children's network up north, I knew full well what that meant. It meant peppy and cute and babbly. Wikipedia also notes Beard's "distinctive 'high-pitched and squeaky' voice." Her character/persona names, "Sugar" and "Suga BayBee," rather reinforce all of these traits. In other words, she possesses all the things that appeal to, say, 5-year-olds, and that often drive their parents nuts.

Way to Go, Guys

 BY SUSPENDING Don Imus for two weeks, CBS and NBC have sent a clear message.

That message is: Racism is fine as long as no one complains about it.

Imus's Klan-like screed about Rutgers's women's basketball team, broadcast nationally last week, would have gotten a lesser-rated jock an immediate pink slip. Imus, though, draws listeners and viewers, and so it was only well after the public condemnation rolled in that his bosses acted. In waiting so long, they gave the impression that they are concerned not that their employee polluted the airwaves with racist drivel, but that that they might lose revenue because of it.

Which makes CBS and NBC as culpable as Imus, especially considering that this isn't the first time that his on-air commentary crossed the line that separates offensive from unacceptable.

Eighth Was Enough

ANOTHER DAY, another bullpen implosion. Yesterday it was Geoff Geary's and Jon Lieber's turns to fall apart, in a gruesome, seven-run Mets eighth that tagged the Phillies with their sixth loss against, of course, just a single win. Jimmy "We're the team to beat" Rollins fed the masses who showed up for New York's home opener by grounding into a double play with the sacks drunk in the fourth and kicking a potential DP grounder in the Mets' eighth. The Phils' woeful start "earned" them the lede in today's "Diamond Daily" feature on ESPN.com, which, sigh, uses the occasion to clumsily trot out that old chestnut about booing Santa Claus. The only solace I take in yesterday's ass-kicking is that I mistakenly thought the game was at night, and so didn't catch a single pitch. Maybe I'll forget to check the start time of today's game, too.